After the disastrous Obama tenure, the U.S. will either return to the melting pot and the idea that race and tribe are incidental, not essential, to our characters, or it will eventually go the way of all dysfunctional societies for which that was not true — Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq.

Og Hanson ender med følgende skudsmål

Obama will go down in history as presiding over the most corrupt administration of the last half-century, when historians finally collate the IRS, VA, GSA, and Secret Service scandals; the erosion of constitutional jurisprudence; the serial untruths about Benghazi, amnesty, and Obamacare; the harassment of journalists; the record shakedown of Wall Street lucre in 2008 and 2012; and the flood of lobbyists into and out of the Obama administration. Eric Holder – with his jet-setting to sporting events on the public dime, spouting inflammatory racialist rhetoric, politicizing the Justice Department, selectively enforcing settled law, and being held in contempt of Congress for withholding subpoenaed documents — managed what one might have thought impossible: He has made Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell seem a minor rogue in comparison.

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit-card holders.

NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country such as Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.

The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences.

The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran.

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Under such conditions, history’s wars usually start when some opportunistic — but often relatively weaker — power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor’s sure defeat.

What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change.

A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventive vigilance that might have stopped it.

[B]ecause that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win

Battle of Kosovo is a 1989 Yugoslav historical drama/war film filmed in Serbia. The film was based on the drama written by poet Ljubomir Simovi?. It depicts the historical Battle of Kosovo between Medieval Serbia and the Ottoman Empire which took place on 15 June 1389 (according to the Julian calendar, 28 June 1389 by the Gregorian calendar) in a field about 5 kilometers northwest of Pristina.
Serbian duke Lazar in 1389. refuses to obey the Turk sultan Murat who is penetrating towards Serbia with great army, in order to conquer Europe through it. Although aware that he is weaker, without enough army, duke Lazar decides to confront him. Serbian lords are not united. Most of them wants to fight, even if the price is defeat, but some of them hesitate. Everyone fit for weapon is sent to Kosovo field. The battle on Kosovo, in 1389. ended with no winners - both armies shed blood and got tired. Lazar and Murat died. But, nevertheless, the battle of Kosovo was a victory, not for Serbian state, which soon became Turkish, but for Europe, which Serbia rescued with bodies of her heroes of the first and the strongest Turkish attack…

The film was released in 1989, which marked the 600th anniversary of the Battle.

A Bulgarian film, Time of Violence uses precisely the same stylistic conventions as American films, the same form of storytelling, the same approach to character, the same values as to what makes a good story, and, moreover, it satisfies American criteria for being a good movie. There is a basic story, with well-attached subplots, lots of action, villains and heros (with a bit more complexity, perhaps, than most American films), and a logical resolution. The production values are high, the performances excellent, the direction skillful. The film has done very well in many countries, including some as foreign to Bulgarian culture as Japan. So why can’t the filmmakers get any distribution deal in the U.S.?

Time of Violence suffers only from its language and its setting. Few Americans know much about the Balkans during the 17th century. But it was one of those proverbial “interesting” times during which it was a curse to live. Most of the Balkans were under the thumb of the Ottoman empire. Islamic empires have more of a reputation for tolerance than most, but the Ottoman empire was showing its ugliest face during this period in Bulgaria. Bulgaria was a strategically important area inhabited by unreliable Christian subjects. The sultan decided that they must all convert to Islam, or die.

Time of Violence focuses on the fate of one valley during this crisis. The son of the miller was taken off by the Turks years ago, while still a boy, to become a janissary. Janissaries were special troops used by the Ottomans. Recruited (involuntarily) from Christian boys, they were separated from their families at an early age, indoctrinated in Islam, and turned into fiercely reliable troops with no allegiance to anyone but the sultan. The miller’s son is now a highly trusted janissary, with the task of converting his entire home valley to Islam. But the people there take their religion very seriously, and will not submit. The janissary becomes more and more brutal in his attempts to convert the valley, for he must slaughter them all if they don’t take the turban.

The film is painted on a large, sweeping canvas, with many characters and subplots, all cleverly woven into a single story. (This accomplishment is even more remarkable when you consider that the original Bulgarian version was nearly two hours longer, yet there is no sign at all that anything has been cut.) And, surprisingly, this isn’t a “vile Turk” story. Director Ludmil Staikov has much more ambitious goals, including an examination of the power of religion and of the destructiveness of violence and fanaticism. Not all of the Christians are good, nor all of the Muslims bad. The Turkish governor of the valley is not loved by his subjects, yet does all he can to avert their doom. He is given a beautiful, tender moment as he leaves the valley forever, in disgrace. Crossing a bridge that leads out of his valley, he notices a stone that has worked out of place. He gets down from his horse, carefully puts the stone back into its place, and then proceeds on to his exile. Even the janissary has his complexities, as he truly wants to spare his people from unnecessary pain, despite having completely transferred his loyalties to the sultan. The screenplay, by Staikov, Georgi Danailov, Mihail Kirkov, and Radoslav Spassov, provides complex shadings of characters and motivations.

Time of Violence is a professionally made film, beautifully photographed, well edited, and with scrupulous care in costuming and set design. The period atmosphere feels perfectly authentic, at least to someone with only passing familiarity with the time and place. The technical aspects of the film are well up to the standard of moderate budget Hollywood movies.

There are some unpleasant moments of torture and brutality in Time of Violence, but they do not exist to excite or titillate. Rather, they are necessary to demonstrate the full scope of the tragedy. Still, some viewers may find themselves looking away during certain scenes. But, otherwise, Time of Violence is a film without flaws. There are no particularly weak points in the film, and many great virtues.

Western fighters often seem to jump at the chance to take part in a fight or help build a new Islamic state. The Soufan Group, a New York-based intelligence outfit, reckons that by the end of May as many as 12,000 fighters from 81 nations had joined the fray, among them some 3,000 from the West (see chart). The number today is likely to be a lot higher. Since IS declared a caliphate on June 29th, recruitment has surged. Syria has drawn in fighters faster than in any past conflict, including the Afghan war in the 1980s or Iraq after the Americans invaded in 2003.

The beheading on or around August 19th of James Foley, an American journalist, by a hooded fighter with a London accent, has put a spotlight on Britain. In the 1990s London was a refuge for many extremists, including many Muslim ones. Radical preachers were free to spout hate. Britain remains in many ways the centre of gravity for European jihadist networks, says Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. “The radical community in Britain is still exporting ideas and methods.”

While the overwhelming majority of foreign fighters in Syria are Arabs, Britons make up one of the biggest groups of Western fighters. But Belgians, Danes and others have a higher rate per person (see left-hand chart above). France, which has tighter laws against extremism, has also seen more of its citizens go off to wage jihad.

(…)

IS is not the only group Westerners join, but it is the most appealing thanks to its global outlook, which includes spreading the caliphate across the world, to its attempts to implement immediate sharia law—and to the glow of its military success.

(…)

Those who talked of defending Syrians now deny that the land belongs to the locals, says Shiraz Maher of ICSR. “Bilad al-Sham”, or Greater Syria, has a special status in Islam because it appears in end-of-time prophecies. It belongs to Allah, fighters declare. But what if Syrians do not want Islamic law? “It’s not up to them, because it’s for Islam to implement Islamic rule,” says the European fighter who says he left his home country because it was not Islamic enough. He says he wants to “educate rather than behead Syrians”.

(…)

Most of IS’s ideas and all of its gorier methods are rejected by most Muslims, who see the group simply as criminal. But it does draw on Islamic theology, arguing—for instance—that non-Muslims should pay jizya, a special tax.

Many say they feel more comfortable in a country where the way of life is Islamic—even if not yet Islamic enough—and have no plans to leave or carry out attacks elsewhere. “I am much happier here—got peace of mind,” says the European fighter.

But others who have gone to Syria to battle against Mr Assad have become disillusioned, says Mr Neumann. They worry about infighting and about killing other Muslims. “This is not what we came for,” they tell him.

But junk food is in ample supply, tweets a Swedish fighter, more happily. And there is a lot of time, sometimes days on end, for “chilling”, says the European fighter on Kik, a smartphone messaging app. That is when he makes “a normal-life day: washing clothes, cleaning the house, training, buying stuff”. Thanks to satellite internet connections, the continuing flow of goods into the country and the relatively decent level of development compared with elsewhere in the region, Syria is a long way from the hardship of Afghanistan’s mountains. Last year, to attract others to come, jihadists tweeted pictures with the hashtag “FiveStarJihad”.

More plausible explanations are the desire to escape the ennui of home and to find an identity. “Some individuals are drawn out there because there is not a lot going on in their own lives,” says Raffaello Pantucci, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think-tank. Images of combatants playing snooker, eating sweets and splashing in swimming pools have sometimes suggested that jihad was not unlike a student holiday, without the booze. For young men working in dead-end jobs in drab towns, the brotherhood, glory and guns seem thrilling. Many of Belgium’s fighters come from the dullest of cities, where radicals have concentrated their efforts to get recruits.

Choudhury, 31, who once ran a Muslim youth group, has been accused of being the ringleader, blamed for recruiting his friends. Others suggest he was simply a willing volunteer, a married father with two children, aged five and two, who was disaffected with life in Britain and desperate for a change of scene.

He had worked for an insurance company and then his local council as a racial awareness officer. But he was also a con artist, who had tricked his own family out of tens of thousands of pounds.

In 2010, he conned them out of £25,000, under the false pretence of needing treatment for cancer, to go to Singapore, not once but twice for surgery.

Once there, Choudhury, who was in perfect health, spent the money on prostitutes costing £200 a night, his penchant for young women revealed in text messages discovered by police.

Back in Portsmouth, he resumed the habit. He went on what he called “lads’ holidays” to Morocco three times and twice more to Singapore in 2011 and 2012, while at the same time downloading lectures by extremist preachers, extolling the virtues of an Islamic caliphate. To atone for his sins, Choudhury decided to embark on a holy war.

(…)

Jaman, a former worker in a Sky customer service call centre, whose parents owned an Indian takeaway restaurant in Portsmouth. He had studied at an Islamic boarding school in London, but life in a call centre proved boring and un-demanding. In May last year, he went to Syria and began recruiting his eager friends. In messages posted on Twitter and other internet sites, he painted a romanticised version of life on the front line, boasting of a “five star jihad”.

A month before he went, Choudhury asked Jaman what kind of gun he could buy for £50. “I had a hand gun but it’s not a great one. I bought it [for] $30,” replied Jaman in messages seized by British police while building up their case against Choudhury.

(…)

Once the men landed in Turkey, they were met by an intermediary who took them overland to the Syrian border. From there, they crossed the border easily and were driven straight to an abandoned hospital in Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, and scene of ferocious fighting.

“You could tell it was an abandoned building with broken pipes and wires,” Choudhury said at his trial at Kingston Crown Court. “No one spoke English. We had a meal of pasta and whilst eating, the table was shaking from the shelling.”

He said he was made to do the cooking and washing and look after children in a makeshift nursery. He had gone with grand ambitions.

In a series of tweets on September 16 and 17 last year, he wrote: “Leaving wife & kids behind for Jihad… All my life I strived to be something, someone, but isn’t being a Muslim something, someone. Isn’t being a Muslim the best thing ever?… The life of this world is nothing but a sweet poison that quenches the thirst of desire and drags the ungrateful soul deeper into Hell!” But in Syria he had become quickly disaffected.

Attention was drawn in the documentary to the fact ISIS’s most effective weapon is its ability to create fear and terror by means of its methods, such as random killings regardless of gender, age, religion or ethnicity, its decapitations, rapes and burying people alive. The gangs do not feel a need to conceal what they have perpetrated, on the contrary they publish their atrocities so that more people can see them.

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The most lurid part of the documentary was the part in which gang members gave their ‘marriage’ numbers in addition to their names and ISIS membership numbers. For instance, Cinêd Cemîl Silêman said his membership number was 333, while his marriage number was 583.

Mihemed Sebah Hebe? said his membership number was 500, and his marriage number was 400.

The ISIS members admitted that what they called ‘marriage’ was in fact rape. They said that every new member of the organisation was raped. The footage of the rape would be used as blackmail in the event of the new recruit refusing to participate in actions.

20-year-old Ferhan Salim Unûf Safên said he had been abducted by Silêman Kohnê, Ebû Qûteybe and Cinêd Cemîl and suffered multiple rapes. “I fainted. When I came round they told me: ‘you are now with ISIS in Jazaa.’ They told me to join. I said it was not possible. They did terrible thiungs to me. Things even the Americans didn’t do in Abu Graib. Things even the Israelis haven’t done to the Palestinians. I’m ashamed to explain them. There were 6 or 7 of them. Their faces were covered. They ‘married me’ about ten times!”

Ebdulkerîm Îbrahîm Bazo said ‘marriage’ was a rule in order to be a member of the organisation. Bazo said the ‘wedding’ was carried out like a ceremony, adding: “those who did it to me said I had gained morale and strength to fight.”

(…)

Bazo added that the footage recorded was used as blackmail. He said: “Silêman Kohnê took me to a village, where my ‘marriage’ was performed by Hecî Newaf Mele Mehmûd. They blindfolded me and carried out the wedding. About a fortnight later they came and said I had to participate in the organisation. I didn’t want to. But they had the footage. They threatened to show it to my family.”

Ehmed Hisên explained horrifying incidents; “I’m from the Sharbaniyan tribe in Malikiyê (Derik). Silêman Kohnê proposed that I join ISIS some time ago. But I told him I was newly married and did not want to be involved in such things. I was then abducted and drugged. When I came to I was in a room which stank terribly. They wouldn’t let me leave the room. Five people came in and told me I should join the organisation, I refused. Then they tortured me. They extinguished cigarettes on my body. Such things were not done to Iraqis at Guantanamo. You would think I was an infidel. They blindfolded and stripped me. They ‘married’ me 15 times. Then they washed my head and put cologne on me. They told me no one could join ISIS without being married. Then they recited very strange verses of the Quran. As they spoke I imagined images of severed heads. They spoke academic Arabic.”

To learn who these people are, what they are fighting for, and who funds them, PRESS TV goes deep into their camps and brings you face to face interviews and exclusive footage. Many of those who were initially infatuated by the group’s promise of justice seem to be horrified and utterly disillusioned today.

Everyone who is not us is the enemy and should be branded as infidel. This seems to be the prevailing ideology of the extreme Takfiri terrorists known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Their aim is said to be the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. Shias, Christians, Sunnis, Yazidies, and whomsoever who dares to question them or raise his voice of dissent are persecuted under their highly distorted version of Islamic Sharia. Gruesome be-headings, crucifixions and mass executions are openly carried out under their iconic black flag which is more like a modern day equivalent of a Jolly Roger. At times, it seems like their victims are whoever who is unlucky enough to be in their path during their killing sprees. And yet they know how to manipulate social media and have succeeded in brainwashing some to join them in their “fight for justice”.

On August 8, nearly three years after the United States pulled out of Iraq, President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes to commence on Islamic State positions in northern Iraq, as the group’s fighters advanced towards the Kurdish capital of Erbil. For six weeks prior to the strikes the Islamic State made stunning gains within Iraq, effectively dismantling the border with Syria and defeating the Iraqi army with little in the way to stop them.

In the final installment of VICE News’ unprecedented look inside the Islamic State, reporter Medyan Dairieh journeys 200 miles from the the group’s power base in the Syrian city of Raqqa to the border with Iraq. There, after defeating the Iraqi army manning the checkpoint, Islamic State fighters work further to bulldoze the border.

As they clear apart a barrier that divided Iraq and Syria, Islamic State fighters declare an end of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a nearly 100-year-old pact between France and Britain that divided up the Middle East. For now, that area between Iraq and Syria is part of a new territory: the Islamic State.

In Part 2 of VICE News’ exclusive look at the emergence of the Islamic State, filmmaker Medyan Dairieh meets an Islamic State member from Belgium who works to indoctrinate some of the youngest members of the group. He also gains further insight into the minds of Islamic State fighters as they host celebrations and military parades featuring American tanks and APCs seized from the Iraqi army.

The Islamic State, a hardline Sunni jihadist group which formerly had ties to al Qaeda, is now in control of a large swath of territory in Iraq and Syria. The group, which adheres to the strictest form of Sharia law, is determined to establish a caliphate that stretches across the Middle East and into the rest of the Muslim world.

As the Islamic State continues its violent expansion in Syria and Iraq, it is also working to win the hearts and minds of new recruits and potential new members in areas it controls.

Now, I understand why Gaza doesn’t want journalists reporting the truth — that Hamas is using innocent Palestinians as human shields and bloody props. But the fabrication charge is something different. If it’s not true, then the reporters are helping Hamas by giving the IDF bad intel. In a normal war, it’s helpful when the enemy thinks you are firing from someplace you’re not. Of course, this isn’t a normal war. It’s mass terror-theater and millions of useful idiots are falling for it.

Israel has reportedly discovered at least 30 tunnels, and has destroyed several of them by employing bulldozers. IDF excavation of the tunnels has resulted in the seizure of tons of Hamas supplies, as well as the discovery of plans for future operations. Clearly, the network of tunnels — using hundreds of tons of concrete that might otherwise have been used by the Palestinians for building homes, shopping malls, parks, schools, hospitals and libraries — indicates that Hamas had been preparing for an ongoing conflict for at least a year. According to the reports, each tunnel has arteries, veins, offshoots, and offshoots of the offshoots in intricate and complex arrangements. As one Israeli spokesman said, “There are two Gazas, one above ground and one below ground: an underground terrorist city.”

As Syria’s bloody civil war enters its third year, fighting has reached the country’s Kurdish-dominated northeast, a region until recently almost untouched by the conflict. The Kurdish PYD party and its YPG militia, which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in neighboring Turkey, took over control of much of Hassakeh province from the Assad regime in the summer of 2012, and with it control of Syria’s precious oilfields.

But the PYD’s hopes of staying neutral in the conflict and building an autonomous Kurdish state were dashed when clashes broke out with Syrian rebel forces in the strategic border city of Ras al-Ayn. That encounter quickly escalated into an all-out war between the Kurds and a powerful alliance of jihadist groups, including the al-Qaeda affiliates ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

In September of 2013, VICE crossed the border into Syria’s Kurdish region to document the YPG’s counteroffensive against the jihadists, who had struck deep into rural Hassakeh in an attempt to surround and capture Ras al-Ayn. With unparalleled access to the Kurdish and Syrian Christian fighters on the frontlines, we found ourselves witnessing a bitter and almost unreported conflict within the Syrian war, where the Assad regime is a neutral spectator in a life or death struggle between jihadist-led rebels and Kurdish nationalists, pitting village against village and neighbor against neighbor.

Turkey, despite officially being a U.S. ally and member of NATO, deserves blame for the latest missile attacks and kidnappings carried by Hamas. The Erdogan government is sponsoring Hamas, inciting extremist fervor and is even harboring the terrorist leader that oversees kidnappings in the West Bank.

The latest missile attacks by Hamas were preceded by the kidnapping and execution of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas operatives. The Hamas leader urging kidnappings of Israelis in the West Bank is named Saleh al-Arouri, and he operates from Turkey.

The kidnappings were preceded by a concerted effort by al-Arouri to fund and plan such operations. He may or may not have masterminded this specific attack, but it was the fruition of his orders. Hamas officially denies involvement, but Israel has identified the kidnappers as Hamas terrorists that were previously arrested and released.

Israeli intelligence has reportedly concluded that Turkey has been the top financial sponsor of Hamas since 2012, with Erdogan arranging for the transfer of $250 million to the terrorist group annually. Another report puts the figure at $300 million. The funding comes from private sources he is close to and not from the official budget. Turkey is also said to have trained Hamas security forces in Gaza through non-governmental groups.

The report said that Turkey coordinates the fundraising with Qatar, another supposed U.S. ally. Members of Congress have asked Qatar to stop financing Hamas. Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, lives in Qatar and even gave an extremist sermon at its Grand Mosque. The U.S. blocked a $400 million aid package from Qatar to pay 44,000 employees of the Hamas government in Gaza.

Make no mistake, Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel. But Hamas is firing rockets at Tel Aviv and sending terrorists through tunnels into southern Israel while aiming, in essence, at Cairo. It is backed in this by Doha and Ankara.

What arises from this state of affairs, and from Hamas’s baseless demands as they appear in the Qatari ceasefire proposal, is that this crisis is far from over.

Hamas is confident, even euphoric. In recent days, people who came in contact with the Palestinian terror organization’s leaders report that the sense they are broadcasting is that Hamas is besieging Tel Aviv, and that it will be starting its invasion of Israel shortly, not that the IDF is striking hard at Gaza, has its ground troops hitting Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, and is setting back the Hamas terrorist infrastructure by years, as IDF Chief Benny Gantz put it on Friday night.

In a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo on Wednesday, Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, dismissed Abbas’s pleas regarding a ceasefire, explaining that “what are 200 martyrs compared with lifting the siege [on the Gaza Strip?]” Abu Marzouk later tweeted that there will be no truce that does not acknowledge the demands of the “resistance,” and that it is “better that Israel occupy the Gaza Strip than for the siege to continue.” Abu Marzouk, needless to say, resides in Cairo, far from the threat of Israeli air strikes.

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Hamas has been operating under the basic assumption that Israel will ultimately work to preserve its hold on the Strip. Hence Hamas’s current confidence, even euphoria. Hamas believes Israel does not want to bring it down or to assassinate its leaders.

In order to force Hamas’s leaders to reconsider their stance, therefore, Israel had better change its tone, and fast. Hamas needs to understand that the rules of the game have now changed, and that Israel is willing to destroy it and its regime, including by seizing the entire Gaza Strip, if necessary. Tzipi Livni took a first step in that direction, to the surprise of her interviewers, when telling Channel 2 on Friday night that she did not rule out bringing down Hamas if that’s what it takes to restore sustained quiet.

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The Americans’ handling of this issue, however, was typically hesitant and unclear. Washington flirted with both Doha and Cairo. Only after Israel demanded that Qatar be removed from the picture did the US announce its support for the Egyptian initiative, with its clauses that largely ignore Hamas’s demands, and which Israel, the Arab League, the US and others quickly backed.

And so the Sunni war rages and the possibility of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel becomes more remote. Abbas is still trying to bridge the gap between the parties — between Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, that is; not between Hamas and Israel. But it’s doubtful he will be the man to reunite the bitterly divided Sunni world.

The head of the IHH terror-tied humanitarian NGO behind the infamous Mavi Marmara Flotilla, Bulent Yildirim, told local television station Haber Turk that “Turkish Jews will pay dearly” for Israel’s actions.

Yildirim said. “Jewish tourists, don’t dare come to Turkey. Tonight and tomorrow we are going to hold a different kind of protest, we do not have patience anymore.”

“The Zionists are putting the future of the Jews in danger, we can not hold back our youngsters anymore,” he said.

Holding them back. Sure. Also John Gotti couldn’t hold back the mafia.

All this comes from the top down, from Erdogan, Turkey’s officially moderate Islamist leader. While Hillary Clinton and John Kerry got close to Turkey, they’ve had nothing to say about Erdogan’s latest rants.

“Things are getting serious here,” a Jewish activist in Turkey told The Algemeiner on Friday, as riots in Ankara and Istanbul at Israel’s embassy and consulate overnight led the Israel Foreign Ministry to recall the families of its diplomats and to reduce its diplomatic representation to a minimum.

“Everything was at moderation until several speeches of [Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdo?an, where he accused Israel of killing women and children,” said the activist, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns.

“With the announcement of the ground operation, the debates on TV channels became really provocative against the Turkish Jewish community,” the activist said. “They asked the community to put pressure on Israel to stop the operation. Yildirim on TV said, ‘We are stopping people from doing ‘bad things’ to the community. The community has to stop Israel, if not ‘bad things’ can happen.’ And the protests in Ankara and Istanbul started. Today it’s Friday and we expect the continuation of these protests.”

Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus.

For the past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the “Turkish model” of “Muslim democracy.” The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his principal pal in foreign policy. I have been ridiculing this notion for years, for example in this 2010 essay for Tablet.

The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language.

(…)

Now the hashish smoke has cleared, Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders has turned back into a sandpit, and the foreign policy establishment has nothing to show for years of propitiation of this Anatolian wannabe except a headache.

Now that Turkey is coming unstuck, along with Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, we should conclude that the entire project of bringing stability to the Muslim world was a hookah-dream to begin with. Except for the state of Israel and a couple of Sunni monarchies that survive by dint of their oil wealth, we are witnessing the unraveling of the Middle East. The best we can do is to insulate ourselves from the spillover effect.

Turkey’s parliament passed a bill that would allow authorities to shut websites without a court ruling, in a move critics slammed as an effort by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to silence dissent and expand his media control.

Lawmakers led by the premier’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, approved the measure late Wednesday, despite charges that it would significantly curtail free speech and intrude on personal freedoms.

The law, which must be approved by President Abdullah Gül to take effect, would allow the agency charged with monitoring telecommunications to block access to Internet sites within four hours of receiving complaints about privacy violations. Turkey’s web hosts would also have to store all traffic information for up to two years, according to the measure.

(…)

“The Turkish public deserves more information and more transparency, not more restrictions,” said Peter Stano, spokesman for the European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Füle. “The law needs to be revised in line with European standards.”

Turkey’s leading industry and business association, TUSIAD, has warned the legislation will lead to wider censorship, while the Committee to Protect Journalists described the law as radical.

(…)

Mr. Erdogan’s move to put curbs on the Internet follows a corruption investigation that started mid-December and has ensnared some of the premier’s political and business allies. More than 20 suspects have been jailed, all of whom deny the charges. The prime minister has cast the graft probe as a foreign-backed plot to topple his government and derail Turkey’s economic progress.

Images, videos and sound clips allegedly pertaining to the bribery case went viral online, prompting the government to claim the investigation is politically motivated and resulting in the removal of a lead prosecutor for allegedly breaching confidentiality rules.

The draft law to broaden the telecommunications monitor’s powers comes just weeks after the government moved to tighten its grip on the judiciary, removing thousands of police officers, prosecutors and judges from their posts.

The Turkish government continues to cleanse the judiciary and security services of opponents as new questions about its links to terrorists arise.

The Islamist government of Turkey has been embroiled in a major political crisis since December 17 when dozens of allies of Prime Minister Erdogan were arrested on corruption charges. Erdogan responded by canning the prosecutors and police chiefs responsible. He blamed foreign governments and a U.S.-based Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen.

In January, the Turkish government fired 96 judges and prosecutors and fired or reassigned 2,000 police officers and prosecutors, including 470 in the capital city of Ankara. Erdogan said that the actions were taken to stop a “coup” and “the judiciary should not go beyond its mission and mandate.”

New attention is also being given to Erdogan’s links to Islamist terrorists.

Erdogan is particularlyclose to the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) that was involved in the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010 where its operatives attacked Israeli soldiers boarding a vessel that tried to violate the blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The blockade’s purpose is to stop Hamas from arming, but Erdogan does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist group. The U.S. State department does list Hamas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The IHH is labeled a terrorist organization by Germany, the Netherlands and Israel. There is bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress for doing the same because of its extensivelinks to Hamas and Al-Qaeda.

On January 1, the Turkish police intercepted a truck allegedly owned by IHH that was shipping weapons to Syria. The involved police and counter-terrorism officers were reassigned and the prosecutoraccused the Turkish government of obstruction for stopping a search of the truck.

On January 14, the Turkish security services arrested 23 suspected terrorists in raids on the IHH. A senior Al-Qaeda operative was among those detained. The Deputy Prime Minister immediatelycondemned the raids and sided with IHH over his own country’s authorities. Again, two police officers were fired, as were bodyguards for eight involved prosecutors.

Erdogan’s links to a Saudi terrorism-financier named Yasir al-Qadi are getting scrutinized by some Turkish commentators. The U.N. required that member states freeze his assets in 2001 because it was convinced of the evidence against him. As with the IHH, the Erdogan government says its friend is innocent.

The Turkish government also has an abysmal record on press freedom. The Committee to Protect Journalists says that more journalists were imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the last two years. In addition, over 70 reporters lost their jobs after reporting on anti-government protests that erupted last summer.

“We need to underline that the Turkish press is no longer doing investigative reporting,” says Ertugrul Ozkok, who held the position of editor-in-chief of the Hurriyet newspaper for 20 years.

President Obama praised the partnership between the U.S. and Turkey in May when the Turkish prime minister visited the White House. The two men have spoken frequently about the unstable situations in Egypt, Syria, and other nations. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Turkey and the U.S. cooperated effectively against terrorism.

But the relationships with people connected to Hamas and al-Qaida is such a problem, argues Schanzer, that it might even qualify Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism. Now, there are only four countries currently on that list: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. All four nations provide support for acts of terrorism, both domestically and internationally. For example, Iran has previously sent people to Argentina to blow up synagogues in Jewish community centers, among other instances.

Such a designation from the U.S. government would be quite drastic and is highly unlikely to happen, considering that it threatens an alliance that has, according to U.S. officials, helped many American efforts in the region. Turkey is critical in overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria and containing Iran. A terror designation, which hasn’t been given since 1993, would mean sanctions and political isolation.

However, that is not saying American officials have not directly gone to Turkish officials and expressed their concern in this area. They have done so to “the highest levels,” according to former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey, who served from 2008 to 2010.

Two years ago I predicted a Turkish economic crash. Erdogan’s much-vaunted economic miracle stemmed mainly from vast credit expansion to fuel an import boom, leaving the country with a current account deficit of 7 % of GDP (about the same as Greece before it went bankrupt) and a mushrooming pile of short-term foreign debt. The Gulf states kept financing Erdogan’s import bill, evidently because they wanted to keep a Sunni power in business as a counterweight to Iran; perhaps they have tired of Turkey’s double-dealing with the Persians. And credulous investors kept piling into Turkish stocks.

I reiterated my warning that Turkey would unravel at regular intervals, for example here.

No more. Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus.

For the past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the “Turkish model” of “Muslim democracy.” The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his principal pal in foreign policy. I have been ridiculing this notion for years, for example in this 2010 essay for Tablet.

The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language.

(…)

Now that Turkey is coming unstuck, along with Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, we should conclude that the entire project of bringing stability to the Muslim world was a hookah-dream to begin with. Except for the state of Israel and a couple of Sunni monarchies that survive by dint of their oil wealth, we are witnessing the unraveling of the Middle East. The best we can do is to insulate ourselves from the spillover effect.

He gets right to the task in the first chapter:” The Closing of the Muslim Womb” with the disclosure that “The Muslim world is on the brink of the fastest population decline in recorded history.” The media, particularly during the period of Arab uprisings has shown hundreds of thousands of Muslims in their mid- twenties. However, this generation of people who grew up with six or seven siblings opts for smaller families and does not reproduce, while the graying population grows less productive and more dependent as food production dwindles – a prescription for economic collapse. The Moslem world is not alone in this scenario. Europe, both Western and Eastern face similar falling population rates and the same consequences. Goldman predicts that by the end of this century population collapse will affect the entire industrial world.

Islamic culture, Goldman states, has been singularly unsuccessful during the past seven centuries. The Muslim world, according to the author, suffers from a greater loss of traditional values and culture among the young generation where drug addiction and prostitution are more endemic than in Western nations. Furthermore, modern Islam does not promote success in science, art, philosophy or democracy, those institutions which sustain civilization and culture.